Trump’s language creates firestorm

President Donald Trump’s morality, character, honesty and mental stability became the political world’s hottest topic last week when the nation’s chief executive reportedly referred to Haiti, El Salvador and African nations as “shithole countries” — then denied doing so.

The firestorm over what many termed Trump’s racist remarks threw talk of immigration reform and help for the so-called Dreamers into chaos. Connecticut’s public officials — federal and state, Democrat and Republican alike — were among those sharply rebuking the president for what Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal called “odious and insidious racism masquerading poorly as immigration policy.”

(Blumenthal, of course, is one of the president’s most outspoken critics, and earlier in the week faulted Trump for declining to say whether he would grant an interview to special counsel Robert Mueller and his team in the Russia investigation.)

But even State Senate Republican Leader Len Fasano, who makes a point of trying to keep Trump’s issues from affecting Connecticut Republicans, called on Trump to apologize for his remarks.

Trump’s mental state and fitness to be the nation’s chief executive already had been called into question earlier in the week with the release of Michael Wolff’s instant best-seller “Fire and Fury,” and had gotten an extra bump from a group of psychiatrists led by Dr. Bandy Lee of Yale.

Trump’s tweeting also had caused confusion over the vote on a bill that would allow the National Security Agency to intercept without warrants calls or emails from suspected foreign terrorists outside the United States. Connecticut Democrat Jim Himes, 4th District, was the only member of the state’s House membership to support the measure, which passed.

In Connecticut politics, meanwhile, hope springs eternal, and candidates and potential candidates for elective office sprang forth in large numbers last week, encouraged by a larger-than-normal turnover of high state offices.

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Paul has more than 40 years of reporting and editing experience at newspapers in New Jersey, Florida and Connecticut. He worked 22 years at the Hartford Courant in various editing roles including as deputy state editor, assistant editor of Northeast Magazine, and as an associate editor at Courant.com. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Rutgers in 1972; and, in 2010, completed a training program in culinary arts at Manchester Community College.

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The massacre of 17 people at a Florida high school cast another shadow of grief, disgust, frustration and anger over the nation last week. For Connecticut, it brought bitter remembrance of the equally horrifying killings at Sandy Hook elementary school more than five years ago.